Cole Porter - You're the Top - A Visual Guide

Cole Porter loved to write songs with lists of various items. "You're the Top" is probably the best known of these list songs. It was written for the Broadway show "Anything Goes" in 1934. Porter composed it during a cruise on Germany's Rhine River. He asked his fellow passengers to tell him what they considered important in their lives, or important in general, and Porter worked them into the lyric. For the record, he names an astonishing 37 persons, places and things in the course of the song. I've included a visual reference to every item he mentions.


Actually there are many variations on "You're the Top," with the list changing with the times. This version is the one Porter himself recorded in 1934. It's been digitally remastered and cleaned up and sounds about as good as it did the day he laid down the track. Porter wasn't much of a singer, but he more than makes up for that with his enthusiasm and sense of fun.

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[SuperWoodyboy]

No No No...a GENIUS of the music world...but a horrible singer...Same as Fred Astaire...Genius when i comes to dance but OWWWW....he was a rotten singer!

[Bob Toomey]

Astaire was an outstanding singer. Perfect diction, perfect pitch, always on key, always on tune. Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and many other major songwriters wanted Astaire, more than anybody, to be the one to introduce their songs to the public. Listen to him again. He was vastly underrated by the public.

[Kimarie Bey]

How many people got here via watching the Woody Allen pic: "Midnight in Paris"? :-)

[Jane Doe]

Cole Porter was the top.

[egitlebob]

It had less to do with him being an amazing singer, and more to do with him being a perfectionist. Not to say Mr. Astaire wasn't a solid singer, he was, but there were much more talented singers out there, but a lot liked to use Astaire because he would do it again and again until it was perfect, and didn't improvise on the piece, etc.

[Gill Smith]

They liked him because he sang what they wrote. He didn't add his two cents - trills, vibrato etc.